Mystery Manor Adventure Forum

I had to do this with my grandsons HP laptop a month ago, I just kept following the prompts and it recovered to factory. I think if you look in Computer on the laptop it will show the recovery partition just as it shows "C". I had no choice, he managed to get a Trojan that wouldn't let me do anything, got it off with antivirus, malwarebytes and all but it kept on returning. I was lucky in that there was a disc that led right into the Recovery paritition, didn't have to mess with "F"anything except for the "bad word". Now I don't trust the free AVG since it got in past it, I am sure it picked it up on You Tube, he practically lives there.

Thanks Middletoe. I already made sure she wasn't trying to do this during a restart, but from a cold boot. Rosaboobie, it could be that the Alt/F10 is not enabled in your BIOS. F2 "should" get you into the BIOS and F12 "should" get you into your boot drive order. The Alt/F10 will not be listed in the boot options according to what I've found on the internet. One thing to make sure of - that there are no devices plugged into the laptop other than your mouse. You might even try it without the mouse plugged in - I found several references to making sure there were no USB flash drives or other peripherals plugged in.

If you want to try booting into the BIOS and making sure the Alt/F10 is enabled, I will be glad to walk you through it. We should switch to email or Facebook chat or something like that to do it though. Even better would be Skype where you could turn your other laptop to the screen so I could see it.

Hawka, the Trojan or whatever it was must have embedded itself in the MBR (master boot record). When they do that, they just replicate themselves every time you start back up! Next time try looking there for the little b******! Unfortunately, she can't look in Computer because she can't get past the Safe Mode screen. This partition is probably hidden as most of them are. And since she is unable to locate the Recovery disks we hope she made as soon as she got it, this is the only option left.

Hi Rosaboobie,
A late happy New Year to you and all the members in this forum.

If all else fails, you could order the 2 Recovery Discs from your Acer site, hope this helps and I really hope you can get that Lappy of yours working, God knows you have enought problems allready.
Take care
Ray

http://recovery-disks.com/acer-aspire-8920g.html

Yikes! $30 for Recovery Disks! Probably would still beat spending a boatload at a repair shop though. She'd also have to find a way to ship them to Kenya.

You are right draclvr, it is a bit expensive and do they Deliver? Hmmm.
I wonder if Acer offers Free Phone Technical support in her region?

If she can get them shipped to Kenya, it's still a good option. Don't know about the phone tech support...

If she has the partition she wouldn't need the recovery discs, I was told by tech support that those are only needed when the hard drive fails, taking out the recovery partition with it. That happened to grandsons laptop shortly after the warranty expired, of course. Even the tech guy had a hard time getting the OS to load from those discs (Ordered them from HP since the computer refused to let me make them, even while I was online with a tech). He finally left the blinking laptop running and went home from his shop, it took all night but was fine after than. He tried with both the recovery discs and an OS disc for Windows 7, not sure which one worked but I had to pay him for the chore. Hopefully she can find the partition. Later on Draclvr can you tell me where to look for that Master Boot thingy? I have Kaspersky trial on it now and will probably keep a paid one on his and put the freebie on the little Netbook. That Trojan was wretched, wipe it out and it comes back, my hair was all over the floor!!

Repairing the MBR can be very tricky. Sometimes just booting from the Windows 7 CD and doing some mojo with the Repair option can do it, but often you have to post logs at one of the tech sites where they go deep into the system to tell you what to do to clean it. If it ever happens again, let me know and I'll point you to one of them. Hopefully, it won't though!

I'm hoping Rosaboobie gets into that partition too... That and I hope her hard drive isn't the problem.

Surely there must be some way I can either get this data off the internet or from the laptop itself? Or maybe not!

I have tried for hours and the F10 just does not work, and yes I am always doing it from a cold boot.

I think I will just shelve this project for now. My mind is too full of other things just now. I need to be able to have a clear mind when I do something like this. But thanks for all the help anyway, folks.

OK. We'll look into it later. But it looks to me like we're going to need to get into the BIOS which I can walk you through easily. Just let me know when you'd like to tackle it!

If it's only going into the BIOS, and you have the time to help me, then just let me have detailed instructions of what to do, Drac. I have been into the BIOS today, so I am a bit more familiar with it than I was before!

And I have only just read Ray's link. $30 is a small price for me to pay to get this laptop up and running again. It is a really superb machine and I would dearly love to see it working. And I see that they do offer a download facility, so I might just look into this, although it says the download might take some time to do. The only thing that worries me is the option for OS. they only offer Win 7, Vista and "Other" and mine is XP, so I might have to contact them first.

If you aren't afraid to get into the BIOS, go ahead and do it. Where you need to go is exactly what you copied and pasted earlier... Make sure D2D Recovery setting is enabled in the Main heading in the BIOS. Usually you just hit F10 to save and exit, but your BIOS might me different. Just read what it says to save and exit. The computer will then complete the boot process, so try repeatedly pressing the Alt/F10 combination. It says to make sure you do it while the Acer logo is showing. It probably won't work the first time, so go ahead and shut it down completely and try booting up again if it doesn't.

Before performing a restore operation, please check the BIOS settings.
Check to see if Acer disk-to-disk recovery is enabled or not.
Make sure the D2D Recovery setting in Main is enabled. Exit the BIOS utility and save changes. The system will reboot.
Note. To activate the BIOS utility, press F2 during POST (what does POST mean Drac?)
To start the recovery process:
Restart the system.
While the Acer logo is showing press Alt F10 at the same time to enter the recovery process.
Refer to the onscreen instructions to perform system recovery."

Oh, I thought you were asking me to do something completely different in the BIOS.

I have done all that it said in the manual already, Drac.

Where it said "Check to see if Acer disk-to-disk recovery is enabled or not." I could not find this topic anywhere in the BIOS!

Where it said "Make sure the D2D Recovery setting in Main is enabled. " It was in fact disabled and I have now enabled it.

But still I can't get F10 to work for me!

You know, this laptop has BluRay Home Theatre and was a very expensive item at the time, being one of the very first 18" screens in the UK, so I really would like to get it up and running, apart from the fact that I normally have a spare laptop in case this new one suddenly packs up, but at the moment I don't have a spare laptop that is working!

Good that you got the D2D enabled and yes, that's all I wanted to make sure of. You did do an F10 to save the setting before exiting the BIOS? Usually, it's F10 and then Enter to save and exit the BIOS.

So, a cold boot and constantly doing an Alt/F10 over and over while it's booting up doesn't catch it? Maybe try hitting the Alt key and holding while you press F10 over and over? Another question is if the F10 is a separate key all by itself and not part of another key that needs a Shift or something like that?

Yes, F10 is a completely separate key, and I have tried all sorts of combinations, but with no success.

My one big fear is that soon this laptop will not even turn on in Safe Mode, the way I am playing around with it.

Why can't I find this recovery partition on the C Drive Drac? And I can't still do the Recovery disks while I am running in Safe Mode??